Title

Author

Date of Award

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Legacy Department

Food, Nutrition, and Culinary Science

Committee Member

Dr. Julie Northcutt

Committee Member

Dr. Paul Dawson

Committee Member

Dr. Doug Smith

Abstract

Three experiments were performed to enumerate the natural microflora on unwashed peaches, known as 'field' peaches, and to determine the efficacy of using acidified electrolyzed water as a topical antimicrobial to remove or reduce the number of the natural microflora or inoculated Listeria innocua from to peach surfaces. During the first experiment, field peaches were divided into four treatment groups: no wash (NW), tap water wash (TW), acidified electrolyzed water wash (AEW), and chlorinated water wash (CL). Peaches were dipped into each of the treatment solutions at ambient temperature and immediately removed (approximately 5 seconds). Peaches were then rinsed in 100 mL of 0.1% peptone and rinsates were plated on aerobic plate count agar for enumeration. For the second experiment, exposure time to the treatment solutions and the temperature of the same treatment solutions were studied. Field peaches were again divided into NW, TW, AEW, and CL but treatments were applied using two exposure times of 5 seconds and 40 minutes at a temperature of 2Â°C (samples were given either a '0' or '40' in their labels to denote exposure time in minutes where 5 second exposures = 0 minutes e.g. TW-0, TW-40, AEW-0, etc.). Rinsing and plating was conducted as mentioned above. Experiment three investigated the efficacy of NW, TW, AEW, and Cl, in reducing numbers of Listeria innocua on peaches that were previously inoculated and held at 4Â°C for 24 hours. Inoculated peaches were dipped in treatment solutions for 5 second and 40 minute times at 2Â°C. Results showed that exposure time had a significant effect on bacterial reduction for both AEW and Cl treatments.